A sophisticated software supply chain attack known as Shai-Hulud has been identified as the root cause of a major cryptocurrency theft that drained approximately $8.5 million from thousands of Trust Wallet users, highlighting growing risks in the open-source ecosystem.
Trust Wallet confirmed that attackers exploited the Shai-Hulud 2.0 self-propagating worm to compromise its development infrastructure, ultimately allowing the publication of a malicious browser extension that siphoned funds from user accounts.
How the attack unfolded
The breach came to light on December 25, when Trust Wallet disclosed that customers using version 2.68 of its Chrome browser extension had been targeted. According to the company’s investigation, attackers uploaded a tampered version of the extension on December 24 using stolen developer credentials, bypassing standard release safeguards.
Users who logged into their wallets between December 24 and December 26 using the compromised extension were exposed. Trust Wallet said 2,520 wallet addresses were affected, with stolen assets totaling roughly $8.5 million. The funds were traced to 17 wallet addresses believed to be controlled by the attackers.
Trust Wallet has pledged to reimburse all impacted users and noted that some non–Trust Wallet addresses were also drained as part of the same operation.
GitHub secrets leak enabled malicious extension
The company traced the incident back to the Shai-Hulud supply chain attack that targeted developers using the NPM package registry. During the breach, Trust Wallet’s GitHub secrets were exposed, giving attackers access to internal source code and a Chrome Web Store API key.
Using that key, the attackers published a backdoored extension outside the normal approval workflow. The malicious extension contacted an attacker-controlled domain to harvest sensitive wallet data and enable unauthorized transactions.
Trust Wallet has urged all users to immediately update to version 2.69 of the Chrome extension, which removes the malicious functionality.
A widespread industry threat
Shai-Hulud is a self-replicating worm that first surfaced in September 2025, targeting the NPM ecosystem to steal credentials and automatically leak them via public GitHub repositories. A more aggressive resurgence, known as Shai-Hulud 2.0 or “Sha1-Hulud,” erupted in late November.
At its peak, more than 640 NPM packages were infected, generating over 25,000 repositories exposing sensitive data. While coordinated action by security teams and platform providers slowed the spread, full eradication proved difficult due to infected cached packages and extensions that failed to auto-update.
Cybersecurity firm Wiz reports that more than 12,000 machines have been compromised so far, with over 29,000 repositories still containing leaked credentials. Although many NPM and GitHub tokens have been revoked, Wiz warns that critical infrastructure and artificial intelligence credentials remain exposed.
Emergence of Shai-Hulud 3.0
Just as infections began to decline, researchers detected a new variant of the worm in late December. Dubbed Shai-Hulud 3.0, the malware was discovered in the @vietmoney/react-big-calendar package.
Security analysts say the new version retains the same core behavior, executing malicious code during installation to evade detection. It scans systems for credentials using automated tools and exfiltrates sensitive data to attacker-controlled servers. Unlike earlier versions, the latest variant removes a destructive fallback mechanism, making it stealthier and potentially harder to detect.
Developers and organizations are being urged to audit their dependencies, remove any infected packages, and rotate all exposed credentials immediately.
Growing risks in open-source supply chains
The Trust Wallet incident underscores the escalating threat posed by software supply chain attacks, particularly in ecosystems that rely heavily on open-source components. Security experts warn that as attackers refine self-propagating malware, the potential for large-scale financial and data losses will continue to rise.
For cryptocurrency platforms and developers alike, the breach serves as a reminder that protecting build systems, credentials, and release pipelines is now as critical as securing end-user applications.
